Facebook to add spherical videos to newsfeed

The Facebook F8 developer’s conference kicked off on Wednesday. CEO Mark Zuckerberg started the show with a keynote address discussing the progression of shareable content online, and where Facebook sees sharing going in the future.

Zuckerberg said sharing started with text messaging and status updates, then progressed to photos and, now, to videos. In the future, however, virtual reality headsets and 360-degree cameras are going to provide even more content to consume. As such, Facebook will soon support “spherical video,” Zuckerberg said. That includes videos that can be viewed on Oculus virtual reality headsets when the device hits the market, and directly in your newsfeed from a computer. Users will also be able to tilt and pan around the camera,

Facebook is even testing out livefeeds of 360-degree videos, which use several cameras and can create the effect of teleporting to a location. Zuckerberg didn’t specifically say when spherical video will launch in the newsfeed, but we suspect it’s going to be rather soon, considering 360-degree videos just hit YouTube, too.